Standing Rock, Taxpayer funded art, offensive?

KMSP FOX 9: Police depicted as Nazis, Klan and Trump groping woman.

The painting, by Anishinaabe artist Jim Denomie, depicts the 2016 protests over the Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota. Protesters were concerned about the impact on the Missouri River and the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

Denomie’s work shows Native American protesters on one side of a fiery river holding peaceful signs. On the far bank are police with military vehicles, attack dogs and a water cannon. One of the vehicles features a swastika, while Klan members stand behind the police. Nearby, a caricature of President Donald Trump is seen groping a woman.
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State Rep. Josh Heintzeman, R-Nisswa, said the painting was “repulsive” and said the Arts Board should not fund projects like this.
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Denomie said the state should continue funding art that criticizes the government because it’s part of the democratic process.

“I invent creative ways to express this information in hopes that people will stop and think about that history and those events,” he said.

 

Images via KMSP; artist Jim Denomie

Hit the link for more images and info. Note, that the amount of one grant Mr. Denomie received was the organization's maximum of $10,000. I'd like to see the invoice(s) and amounts for paint and canvas supplies.

Should "provocative art" have a purpose beyond just being provocative? I'm not sure I buy the artist's rationalizations of his "deeper meanings" behind the images. For me, I base it on "plug-in different characters" and what's the result? In other words, substitute any and all different people and groups for those that are represented in the images, and is the result the same, different or unchanged? Bill Clinton groping a woman? R. Kelly? Drug cartels and gangs depicted as a KKK-like group? Insert the Anti-Defamation League as the "crushing law enforcement" agency? The U.N.? LGBTQ? Russians? Irish? Muslims? The Rotary Club? Toastmasters?

Does art like this work towards a process of healing and improving relationships or does it further foment division and prejudices? Should the government fund "the arts"? If so, what restrictions, if any, should be placed on artistic details and expression? Would "the arts", in general, suffer greatly if limited solely to private funding and philanthropy?

Subject-matter or "rationalized subject-matter" notwithstanding, the quality of the painting(s) itself - and I'm no painter or paint artist by any means - resembles cheap, water-color figures from a C- high school student art class assignment.

Anyone?

More at KVVR.